


the mirror of reason

by en passant (corinthian)



Category: Fate/Grand Order
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-30 02:04:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6404134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corinthian/pseuds/en%20passant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A modern fairytale-like retelling. Two brothers, one heart, that sort of thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In "The Snow Queen" the Mirror of Reason is a frozen lake on which Kai is given a task that is impossible for him. If he can piece together the world 'LOVE' then the Snow Queen will free him. In some versions, if he completes her task she will love him and he will have everything he's ever wished for.
> 
> Kai is so blinded by mirror shards in his eye and heart that he can't piece together the word by himself. It's only with Gerda's love (for him) that together they're able to solve the puzzle. You could say that it's only together that LOVE is able to happen, but that's a little sanguine, isn't it...

Modern magic is so very rare, it's the kind of thing that's easily missed. Usually it's little things, like inviting rain during the summer, thunder snow and window boxes in the city. Sometimes, however, it's much larger. When Karna was young he was blessed by a miracle. He had been very sick with a heart disease and his mother had asked, someone, anyone: Please give my son a working heart. Magic works in peculiar ways and at the same time, across the city, a family's third youngest son was struck by a car and pronounced dead on the spot. That night, there were two miracles.

Karna drew one breath with his old heart, and then the following with his new heart. It was a little younger than his body, a little small for his chest, and a jagged sunburst scar marred his skin. His mother was so afraid of the miracle that had occurred that she left that night. She left her son with his new heart and strange existence behind.

(And, across the city, Arjuna who had been declared dead on arrival woke in the morgue and found himself terribly alone.)

Like all fairy tales, this is just the beginning. For Karna, who came into the world unblessed and was abandoned but clung to the single idea that someone had given him a second chance — and Arjuna, who realized all at once that he could be alone in the world and felt something missing from within him the tale continues. This is a story like that.

* * *

When Arjuna turned thirteen he burned all of his baby photographs. There was a certain amount of distant embarrassment he felt for the soft-faced, round-cheeked child in the pictures but mostly he did not want to be reminded of who he had once been. The child that had dark eyes and an easy smile was too foreign — after the accident his eyes had become stained pale, the lightest blue imaginable and every smile he made felt false and brittle. (He had been reassured, so often, that it looked as natural and kind as ever, but somewhere deep in his chest he knew it to be untrue.)

He did it in secret, gathering his photographs and removing them from the frames, then stuffing them into a paper bag. After school he went to the back, behind the building and set the bag on fire. He thought, perhaps, that he should be able to feel something from it. Perhaps a sense of victory or one of regret.

Instead he kept thinking, it's been three years since he felt anything at all.

* * *

Someone might say that Karna wasn't built for the modern world. Everyone who met him might say something similar. He had an old soul, kind eyes and a bad habit of giving everything away. School wasn't possible because in the end he had no academic ambition. Jobs were difficult because he would get waylaid by other people's requests, or pursue a task with such singlemindedness it was bordering on ferocious.

It was not in his nature to dwell, but sometimes Karna was struck with such a foreign feeling of emptiness that it must be someone else's.

He didn't cry, not often, but in times that he felt empty tears would spring unbidden to his eyes. Sometimes he wouldn't even notice that he was crying until they slipped down his face. When asked what was wrong he would simply have to answer, I'm carrying someone else's sorrow.


	2. Chapter 2

Arjuna keeps a regimented lifestyle. He wakes at the same time every day, regardless of if it is a weekday or weekend, has the same breakfast, the same lunch, the same neigborhood jog and daily rituals. Some would call him fastidious. He's only a college student, they might say, yet he has such well-formed habits. 

He thinks — they wouldn't laud him so if they knew his other habits. If they knew that in the morning when he checks his appearance in the mirror he avoids his own gaze. The unnatural eyes that were never his to begin with, are too pale and he knows, too unkind.

They wouldn't accept the him that has dark desires. He realized it first, when he was in high school and a classmate mocked him, once. It had been over something small, just a slight that children throw at each other. But for the rest of the year, Arjuna had plotted. He ensured that the other student was buried beneath his achievements, was cut off from their peers and was absolutely miserable. He had fantasized, over the course of that year, of murdering his classmate.

It seemed like such a simple thing in his mind, the perfect murder, a problem taken care of. He had realized, then, that he was truly an irredeemable soul. A rotten person who delighted in the pain and suffering of others.

He keeps that in mind, every minute of every day. Arjuna lives with the pristine — a distant, unfeeling — worry that he'll slip up. It happens too often, simply riding the bus or working his part-time or during class. Even passing strangers. The thought springs to his mind: useless, worthless, they're in the way, he could remove them.

Or, even worse than that, sometimes he doesn't even think of them as people. In a way, it is extreme isolation. And, in a way, he enjoys it. He grows up feeling like he's the only person in the world.

This changes, on a day that is otherwise unremarkable. Arjuna wakes at the same time as normal, does his morning jog, eats breakfast and goes to work. It's a partly cloudy day, spring, and while the flowers haven't begun to bloom yet, the winter ice has all melted. The particular scent of rain and fresh earth lingers in the air. 

Picturesque. But, for Arjuna — he thinks about the dirt on the ground, the scuff mark on the outside of his shoe, the couple that walks too slowly in front of him, the rattle of a car's slightly loose muffler. The world is an arrangement of annoying noises and unnecessary grievances that should just stop.

A bike messenger passes him.

(Arjuna has a faint memory of being very young, he must have been just three or four, of climbing to the top of a jungle gym. A feeling of elation, a little of fear, excitement. It had been the last strong emotion he could remember.)

Something in his chest moves and rattles. At first, Arjuna doesn't know what it is. He wonders, briefly and ridiculously, if he's been shot. It's a sharp pain that spreads with a soft warmth and he thinks it's his blood leaking out of his chest across his clothes but when he looks down there's nothing.

At that moment, Arjuna is seized by an emotion he does understand as well, obsession. The bike messenger weaves in and out of traffic and down the street and he tracks the body with his eyes. The further the messenger gets from him, the weaker the feeling in his chest, until it disappears entirely. He reaches two conclusions, he wants to experience that feeling again and he never wants to experience that feeling ever again.

It disrupts his entire day. Arjuna calls out sick from work and walks until his feet hurt. He's aimless and can't find the energy to compose his face to politeness. He had lived so long without feeling that it's as if the whole world had become new and vibrant only to disappear on him.

The only thing he can do, he decides, is to find the bike messenger again. Then, if he needs to, he'll just get rid of him.

* * *

"Glad to see you back with no incidents! Though, they certainly keeps things interesting!" Karna's boss — a formidable woman who's keen business sense and side business (possibly, quite possibly, illegal) keeps everything moving smoothly. There are times when Karna delivers "unopenables", but a job is a job and her odd hours and demands match his own off-beat schedule.

By _incidents_ — Karna had some terrible luck. One time he was somewhat mugged, but in the end he took his would-be assailant out for lunch at the deli and his delivery had been four hours late, but everything had turned out okay in the end. Another time, he simply had been waylaid by another request and a package was late.

Another, he had been arrested, but in the end that was fine too.

"Job complete." Karna hands over his docket and settles his bag into the cubby. There's three spaces on the shelf — one for him and one for his two dayshift coworkers who he almost never spoke to but thought of fondly. He is almost certain that the first shift worker, Marie, owns part of the business as well though she never speaks of it and neither does his boss. The second shift worker, Alex, returns from jobs with the biggest tips Karna has ever seen — and often little gifts from their clients. A charming youth, or something like that.

"Got time for one more?" His boss leans over the table. There's always something familiar but chaotic about her. She has an attitude that's a cross between being your best friend and being someone ready to mug you.

"Always," Karna never turns down a job. It's what got him his job in the first place (after losing so many other part times, full times and other employment opportunities...). In a way, it's fortuitous.

It's a simple job. A package to a girl in a location. Don't look inside, don't ask questions, she'll pay in cash. He picks up the package, takes a new sign-slip and heads out the door. It's a routine kind of job. It's on the way that everything changes. An incident.

Karna doesn't see who it is that he passes but he _feels_ it. A sudden ache in his heart, the feeling of standing at the edge of a cliff, looking into the darkness and never seeing an end. Elation. Fear. Loneliness. A desperation that he can only empathize with but not understand.

He doesn't investigate it, instead he keeps pedaling smoothly. He has a package to deliver, after all.

(Karna doesn't understand the gap he leaves behind, as he continues forward.)


End file.
